Chi-coco Cuckoo for Coco

Conquering, confident Conan can still riff with the best

Conan O'Brien is "Legally Prevented from Being Funny on Television," according to his parting agreement with NBC and the title of his current tour.

So he has chosen, instead, to be funny in almost exactly the same way he is on television, but in front of live audiences in a 32-city tour.

Longtime sidekick (and native Illinoisan) Andy Richter is with him, as are most of his band from "Tonight" and versions of O'Brien's most famous bits from his two NBC talk shows: "Late Night" and, recently and notoriously briefly, "Tonight."

Wednesday night saw this version of television, unboxed, take the Chicago Theatre stage for the first of two sold-out shows (the second is Thursday) and a raucous crowd that greeted O'Brien like a conquering hero.

O'Brien and his show mates gave back, riffing on Water Tower Place, the inexplicable popularity of Garrett Popcorn ("for people who've never heard of a microwave"), and how mentioning the Blackhawks, Bears and pizza brings Chicago crowds together, but the baseball teams do not.

"I was here for a week in '06 (with 'Late Night')," he said. "And it was one of the best experiences I've had, being in this theater."

The boisterous show deftly mixed O'Brien's joke-telling, parody songs and loose-limbed vamping; interplay with Richter ("I've learned that people in adult book groups don't appreciate adult books," Richter said); and pre-taped bits that felt like part of the show rather than fillers.

He seems to have peeled back from some of the anger that followed his split from NBC, although that may have been the legal prohibitions talking. The network drew boos when mentioned, but it wasn't often. When O'Brien did a voice that sounded not unlike Jay Leno's, he insisted, "That was my impression of rapper Ludacris!"

Guests included Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher and actor and Chicago native John C. Reilly, who helped O'Brien with his holdover bit making fun of the absurdities in the action series "Walker, Texas Ranger."

O'Reilly, as a gift, sang about not watching "The Tonight Show" anymore to the tune of "Don't Get Around Much Anymore."

"Team Coco" shirts were everywhere at the show Wednesday, the O'Brien nickname an identifying mark of those who sided with the former "Simpsons" and "Saturday Night Live" writer in January, after he was told, essentially, to step aside for Leno's return to the 10:35 p.m. time slot. Indeed, the pre-show merchandise line, to buy $35 and $45 official "Team Coco" shirts and other gear, stretched for at least 50 people.

Not mattering so much to his underdog status, apparently, is the hefty, reported $32 million severance he won in exchange for losing "Tonight" and staying off TV until September. Never mind, too, that he has a new talk show starting up Nov. 8, on TBS.

And never mind, especially, that if people had been as rabid about seeing O'Brien when he was actually on the air as they have been during the current comic barnstorming, he might still be hosting "Tonight," and Leno might have been the guy performing comedy in Chicago. O'Brien drew just 2.5 million viewers a night, about half what Leno had been drawing.

Wednesday was a busy day for the host. In the morning he was in New York to kick off a TBS presentation for an audience of advertisers and media writers.

There, he said that going the Jon Stewart route, as a comic host on basic cable, rather than network, was right for him. "I really believe in basic cable," he said. "I don't want to live in a country with less than six ESPNs."

"I can't wait to get back to having fun on television again," he added. "It's all I want to do."

Little about O'Brien's TV career has been easy of late, and he ended the Chicago show singing a personalized version of the disco hit, "I Will Survive." But for now, there is the concert tour, a way to hone performance skills, keep his name before the public and capitalize on the goodwill he accumulated during his bitter move to unemployment.

More impressive was that some of the unease that O'Brien still displays on TV seemed to melt away before the crowd. This was a confident, even commanding performance by a guy who might come back from this not only a more beloved host, but a more skillful one.